


Picture Imperfect

by Nny



Series: Month 1: Quantity (tumblr fic) [7]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Derek's stupid peace sign, Happy Ending, M/M, Photographs, Stiles' ridiculous face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:37:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1849813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek's okay with the arranged marriage, his family needs this, but it'd be great if the photographs he's been sent actually showed the guy's <em>face</em>...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Picture Imperfect

“Don’t you even want to look at the photographs?” His mom sounds oddly hesitant so Derek pastes a smile onto his face, takes the offered folder and places it in front of himself.

“It’s fine, mom. I remember Stiles,” he says. Not _well_ , maybe, because Beacon Hills is a predominantly supe area and the kid had been sent away for school, but he remembers big eyes in a small face, a wicked grin, a look of genuine surprise when his idiotic ideas had blown up in his face. It could be fun, at least. Definitely not predictable.

“You don’t have to do this, Derek,” Talia says, solemn and maybe even a little angry around the edges. Derek flinches automatically, ducks his head, and she sighs. “This isn’t a penance.”

“No, it’s an _alliance_ ,” Derek says. “It’s fine, we need this, it’s not a problem.” He raises his head again, meets his mother’s eyes, and takes a deep breath. He tries to will his heart to slow a little, tries to calm himself down, tries every subtle trick he’s learned over the years in order to conceal a lie. “I want to marry him,” he says.

*

It hasn’t escaped his notice that it’s his fault they’re in this situation. Nobody’s said it - well, nobody but _Peter_ has said it - but it’s sitting right in the center of the arrangements, an invisible presence so vast that everyone has to edge around it carefully with barely oxygen to spare. Derek isn’t sure he can keep breathing, sometimes.

It’s part of why he’s okay with an arranged marriage, though. That, at least, is a relief. His first - the time he’d made a _choice_ had ended so badly, such comical, farcical, _Shakespearean_ levels of awful that to have that pressure removed makes up for practically anything else. He remembers the stench of smoke from the smoldering upper floors of his house, the knowledge that it could have been so much worse; he remembers the Sheriff wrapping a rough blanket and an arm around him, making sure he was okay. Handcuffing Kate and leading her away.

So when the offers had gone out to the McCall kid (FBI), to Whittemore (son of the DA), to Greenberg (high-powered lawyer mom), he’d been rooting for Stilinski a little. With the increased hunter presence, with the Argents’ treachery, they need the law on their side, and the local sheriff is maybe lowest ranking but Derek likes him. Had liked.

Still likes, even with the ice in his eyes when he’d looked at Derek. They’d been signing contracts; Stiles had been at school, and seventeen, so his dad had been his proxy, and Derek’s mom had been friendly and welcoming but Stilinski’s eyes hadn’t thawed once.

“Can I -” he’d said, interrupting Talia’s compliments and polite words, “can I just get a quick word with Derek?”

“Right,” she’d said, wrong-footed and a little flustered; as Alpha she rarely got interrupted. “Of course.”

He’d ushered her out of the study and then crossed it in two quick strides, leaning down with his hands on the desk so he could stare direct into Derek’s eyes.

“Whatever the deal is here,” he’d said, low and angry, like the volume could make a difference in a house full of werewolves, “however much say you got, I really don’t care. I respect my son’s choices, even if it’s my considered opinion that they are stupid-ass decisions, and I’m not gonna do anything to stop this.”

Derek could feel his eyes widen at that. He’d just kind of assumed - it’s a beneficial alliance, the Hales are one of the largest and most influential packs in this part of the state, and he’d thought Stiles had been going along with his parent’s wishes, like Derek.

“Still, if you hurt him?” Stilinski continued, “if you in any way cause him to be unhappy? I will make your life a living hell. Are we clear?”

“Clear,” Derek had said, swallowing tightly.

And it is. It’s clear. It’s another layer of pressure that he’s not sure he can live up to, but he has to do his best.

It’s the middle of the night and the house is completely still, just the gentle familiar creaking at the midnight chill. It’s not the first night he hasn’t been able to sleep, but the beautifully pressed suit hanging on the closet door is a menacing silhouette that’s making it even harder.

Derek groans and rubs his eyes, flicks on the bedside light. The folder’s on his nightstand and he sits up and pulls it onto his lap, flicks through the paperwork - contracts, letters, stupid questionnaires they’d both had to fill in - to the pile of glossy photographs at the back, and he looks through them again. There’s a couple of kids in lacrosse helmets, helpfully Sharpie-labeled ‘Stiles’ and ‘Scott’ where they’re unrecognizable through the grills. A blurry close-up of someone’s eye, golden-brown with long eyelashes. A guy doubled over and laughing with a hand spread over his face like he’s trying desperately to hold it in. There’s not one of them where Derek can properly see his face but he’s flipped through them a million times anyway. Stiles may not be a picture but these pictures say a thousand things, full of life and laughter and a sense of fun that Derek’s been missing, and even if he’s not relaxed about this he’s allowing himself a cautious optimism. A little hope.

So when he walks through the back door into the garden the next day, gets a good look at the rows of chairs and the trellised archway and the man standing beneath it, he can practically feel his heart splash down into his stomach.

“No,” he says. Half the crowd turns around instantly, so he repeats it a little louder for the other half. “No, I can’t do this.”  
“Derek?” his mom says.

Laura, at the front, says something polite and maybe even humorous, something about delays, and her presence is enough to get everyone turned around again; she’ll make a good Alpha someday.

Derek pulls his arm out of his mother’s hold and turns around, walks carefully back into the house and up the stairs and into his room. Doesn’t run. Doesn’t look back to see if Stiles - who hadn’t been distracted by Laura, who hadn’t taken his eyes off him - is still looking.

He feels like an idiot. Like a child. He sits on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands, and he’s expecting his mom, maybe even his dad, so he just grunts acknowledgement at the knock on his door and then starts and looks up at the unfamiliar voice.

“Hey.”

What he’s wearing is simple enough - charcoal gray suit, matching tie, spray of white flowers in his buttonhole - but Stiles looks… Incredible. _Beautiful_. All the long lines of him that the photographs showed tied practically in knots are devastating up close, straightened out, leaning casually against the door frame. He’s smiling a little, lop-sided, one eyebrow raised, but there’s something a little hesitant in the way he’s looking at Derek.

“Sorry,” Derek says.

Stiles shrugs. “Hey man, it’s okay. We should have hooked up before this, got a coffee, so you could get a look at me before all this -” he waves a hand towards the window; even from the third floor it’s easy to hear the chaos outside. “It’s not your fault I’m not your type.”

Derek rubs his face with both hands, laughing a little incredulously, because that is just - that is so incredibly the opposite of what is wrong here.

“I don’t want to make you do this,” Derek says. Stiles blinks at him, mouth open, and for a moment there’s a hint of the ridiculous awkwardness of the photographs, which is a kick in the teeth that Derek didn’t expect.

“Make me…?”

“The photographs,” Derek says. “You were clearly trying to get me to refuse - I mean what the hell, Stiles? They’re ridiculous, and you’re -”

“I’m what?” Stiles asks, and his voice is a little soft, and a little hopeful, and for the first time since seeing him waiting at the end of the aisle Derek’s stomach stops its painful twisting.

“You’re kind of beautiful,” Derek says, low and flat, and the smile that spreads over Stiles’ face takes the ‘kind of’ out of the equation.

“Wow,” he says. “Okay, Derek, look. No one’s making me do anything, I swear.” He grins a little, abashed, and rubs the back of his neck. “I mean, I would have maybe started with coffee, worked up to this whole thing, but when the offer of arranged marriage came I had to jump on it. I have had the biggest crush on you for an embarrassingly long - I mean, basically my entire life.”

“What,” Derek says.

“I mean this whole -” he waves at the window again, like the wedding and the weirdness encompass the entire world outside of this room, which somehow manages to make Derek feel a little saner, right here. “The whole thing’s weird, and it’s awkward, but the contract says in a year we get to choose again, right? And I was kind of hoping that by the end of it it’d be something that’d work for both of us.”

“So the photographs,” Derek says, fighting against the rising tide of hope in his stomach.

Stiles laughs, and his body folds up a little around it like it takes over control, like his laugh is that all-encompassing that nothing else has a hope of getting a word in.

“Oh man,” he says. “Okay, first? I am the least photogenic person ever. That is just - that is just a thing that you’re gonna have to get used to.” He flashes a sidelong look at Derek at that, earnest and hopeful and a little mischief underlying it, and Derek quirks his mouth up a little in response. “Second, that was a part of my Great Seduction Plan.”

“I’m a little worried,” Derek says. “I can hear capital letters.”

“Oh it is great,” says Stiles, “and it is plansome. I remembered you liked lacrosse, see, and you were always - okay, you weren’t much for laughing, but you used to look at me and Scott with this, like, restrained kind of grin teasing at the edges of your mouth, and it was basically my favorite thing in the universe.”

Derek’s pretty sure he’s wearing that exact expression right now, actually. He flips through the photographs and holds up the close-up of Stiles’ eye, one eyebrow quirked in enquiry.

“Oh wow,” Stiles says, and laughs hard again, loud and obnoxious and lovely. “I am unphotogenic and also a seriously terrible photographer, that’s another thing -”

“That I look forward to learning to live with,” Derek says, and pushes himself to his feet.

“Seriously?” Stiles says, and Derek nods and walks over, cups his cheek so he can feel Stiles’ slow-growing smile against the palm of his hand.

*

People always look a little confused when they ask to see the wedding photographs and Derek points to the one on the mantle. They’re both dressed casually, both in jeans, and Derek’s got a bright pink badge that says ‘today you are 1!’ pinned to his henley. He’s smiling wide at the camera, throwing up an awkward peace sign, and you can barely see Stiles’ face where his forehead’s pressed against Derek’s temple, his arm draped around his back where he’s laughing hard enough that he almost can’t keep himself upright.

They’re a pretty unphotogenic couple, all told, but it’s something they’ll always be happy to live with.

**Author's Note:**

> All Teen Wolf ficlets I've been writing this month are tossed up on tumblr [here](http://teenwolftidbits.tumblr.com).


End file.
